If you’re looking to boost your number even more, activities such as earning raid and Arena achievements or realm-first titles will help you get it up, and you'll also begin receiving in-game mail with exciting offers for additional ways to enhance it.

Yes, but a PUG raid leader has no easy way of telling how a player will perform. Gearscore (when it's not abused with pvp gear) at least gives him a quick estimate of how well the player could theoretically perform.

I know it is annoying and misused a lot, but without gearscore and achievements I don't believe the pugging scene would be nearly as good as it is.

Besides, breaking the typical 5k threshold isn't too difficult. A week or two of heroics and a good TOC25 GDKP run should put most fresh 80s close to it.

Fresh 80s should have at least 3k from the leveling process. Couple that with money fed from a main and that's more than enough to get an epic flier + gdkp run.

Now if the new 80 doesn't have a main to feed him gold he is either a reroll, in which case he should have taken 2 gathering profs to build his gold base, or a new player in which case he should take some time learning the game and his class at 80 before venturing into raids.